NSSN Virginia-class - current status and future

bobbymike said:
Moose said:
bobbymike said:
news.usni.org

BWXT CEO: Navy’s Next-Generation SSN(X) Attack Boat Will Build Off Columbia Class - USNI News

The Navy’s next attack submarine will feature technology in the Columbia-class program and be significantly larger than the current class of the Virginia-class attack submarines, the chief executive of BWX Technologies said on Monday as part of the company’s third-quarter earnings call. The head...
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With the 4X Trident quad packs filled with hypersonic strike missiles? Here’s hoping.
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Without the quad packs. The current Navy Secretary wants a "pure" SSN like the -21s. He appears to be unreceptive to the idea of payload tubes being part of the equation.
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Do you have a quote for that I don’t see it in the article. Seeing these will be built starting maybe 2030 he might not have much say in the matter.
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CBO has some analysis along these lines. It's not impossible that there would also be some vertical launchers but it's difficult to see room for a number of VPM-like launchers and a large torpedo room.

www.thedrive.com

Navy Wants New 'Seawolf-Like' Attack Submarines To Challenge Russian And Chinese Threats

The boats would be a key part of the service's plans to revitalize its anti-submarine capabilities, but at a price of more than $5 billion each.
www.thedrive.com www.thedrive.com
 
TomS said:
bobbymike said:
Moose said:
bobbymike said:
news.usni.org

BWXT CEO: Navy’s Next-Generation SSN(X) Attack Boat Will Build Off Columbia Class - USNI News

The Navy’s next attack submarine will feature technology in the Columbia-class program and be significantly larger than the current class of the Virginia-class attack submarines, the chief executive of BWX Technologies said on Monday as part of the company’s third-quarter earnings call. The head...
news.usni.org news.usni.org

With the 4X Trident quad packs filled with hypersonic strike missiles? Here’s hoping.
Click to expand...
Without the quad packs. The current Navy Secretary wants a "pure" SSN like the -21s. He appears to be unreceptive to the idea of payload tubes being part of the equation.
Click to expand...
Do you have a quote for that I don’t see it in the article. Seeing these will be built starting maybe 2030 he might not have much say in the matter.
Click to expand...

CBO has some analysis along these lines. It's not impossible that there would also be some vertical launchers but it's difficult to see room for a number of VPM-like launchers and a large torpedo room.

www.thedrive.com

Navy Wants New 'Seawolf-Like' Attack Submarines To Challenge Russian And Chinese Threats

The boats would be a key part of the service's plans to revitalize its anti-submarine capabilities, but at a price of more than $5 billion each.
www.thedrive.com www.thedrive.com
Click to expand...
It depends on where they put it.

If they descide to stuff them amidships like the APHNAS Design or the Russian Yasen class they could do it. Or Re-jigger the bow systems to go around them.

Honestly considering the Viriginia's are still new boats with more on order its extremely early to tell...
 
https://twitter.com/x/status/1331156014297612291
View: https://twitter.com/lfx160219/status/1331156014297612291

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Firefinder said:
TomS said:
bobbymike said:
Moose said:
bobbymike said:
news.usni.org

BWXT CEO: Navy’s Next-Generation SSN(X) Attack Boat Will Build Off Columbia Class - USNI News

The Navy’s next attack submarine will feature technology in the Columbia-class program and be significantly larger than the current class of the Virginia-class attack submarines, the chief executive of BWX Technologies said on Monday as part of the company’s third-quarter earnings call. The head...
news.usni.org news.usni.org

With the 4X Trident quad packs filled with hypersonic strike missiles? Here’s hoping.
Click to expand...
Without the quad packs. The current Navy Secretary wants a "pure" SSN like the -21s. He appears to be unreceptive to the idea of payload tubes being part of the equation.
Click to expand...
Do you have a quote for that I don’t see it in the article. Seeing these will be built starting maybe 2030 he might not have much say in the matter.
Click to expand...

CBO has some analysis along these lines. It's not impossible that there would also be some vertical launchers but it's difficult to see room for a number of VPM-like launchers and a large torpedo room.

www.thedrive.com

Navy Wants New 'Seawolf-Like' Attack Submarines To Challenge Russian And Chinese Threats

The boats would be a key part of the service's plans to revitalize its anti-submarine capabilities, but at a price of more than $5 billion each.
www.thedrive.com www.thedrive.com
Click to expand...
It depends on where they put it.

If they descide to stuff them amidships like the APHNAS Design or the Russian Yasen class they could do it. Or Re-jigger the bow systems to go around them.

Honestly considering the Viriginia's are still new boats with more on order its extremely early to tell...
Click to expand...


There is evidence that creating a design and building lots of them - or at least variations of them, while continuing to improve your processes and product is a good idea. Production is much more difficult than prototypes with repetition, solving problems, and building a competent supply chain and work force making the difference in improving many aspects of the product. With some notable exceptions, the build quality, speed of build, and cost management improve over time. Tesla Model Y uses ~75% of the the parts of a Model 3. They are constantly improving the production line. Margins, tech, speed of build etc are all improving dramatically. Virginia-class delivery time dropped dramatically (till those times it didn't). Cost growth has been managed through changes in technology, build processes, and build time.

For those reasons, and others, I would like to see SSN(X) be a shorter variation of Columbia, once the kinks are worked out with Columbia tech. Re-using much of Columbia's design and systems will, over time, provide a better solution for the life of both platforms. Folks here know much better than me the advantages provided by the larger diameter and dual class systems use. A deeper magazine than Virginia would be beneficial as well. In the mean time, keep introducing advancements into Virginia-class through at least Block-VII -or- when a sound Columbia variant can be built in 60 months.
 
www.defensenews.com

US Navy inks deal for a tenth Virginia-class submarine

The U.S. Navy sealed the deal on a 10th ship in its latest iteration of the Virginia-class attack submarine, issuing a $2.4 billion adjustment on a contract initially awarded in December 2019.
www.defensenews.com www.defensenews.com

Though I note there is still no mention of upgrading/retrofitting the features that will be necessary for Arctic operations.
 
Moose said:
www.thedrive.com

Navy Wants Triple-Packed Hypersonic Missile Modules On Its Stealthy Zumwalt Destroyers

The modules are too large for the ship's existing vertical launch cells, so they would likely take the place of its all but abandoned deck guns.
www.thedrive.com www.thedrive.com
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The Navy's present plan is to field IRCPS first on its future Block V Virginia class submarines, each of which will have four large-diameter multi-purpose vertical launch tubes, very similar to those on Ohio class boats, in an additional hull section known as the Virginia Payload Module (VPM). The service has also already conducted at least one test involving the firing of a missile carrying a prototype C-HGB from one of its Ohio class boats. There has been at least one ground-based test of the boost-glide vehicle, as well, but testing of full prototype IRCPS/LRHW missiles is not set to begin until later this year.
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If the FPM and APM are indeed related, it would also strongly suggest that it would only take limited effort to integrate IRCPS onto Ohio class boats, either SSBNs or SSGNs, as well as the Columbia class submarines and possible future Large Payload Submarines. The Large Payload Submarine is an SSGN-like design concept the Navy has been exploring in recent years. If nothing else, the APMs would allow each Block V Virginia to carry up 12 IRCPS missiles at a time.
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Love the Large Payload Submarine idea. The future fight is in the Pacific you should be able to walk from Guam to Hawaii to the US West Coast keeping your feet dry on the hulls of submarines (if they weren’t submerged obviously)
 
bobbymike said:
Love the Large Payload Submarine idea. The future fight is in the Pacific you should be able to walk from Guam to Hawaii to the US West Coast keeping your feet dry on the hulls of submarines (if they weren’t submerged obviously)
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Nay sir, Heavy cruisers, Battlecruisers, and Battleships for the win! (all nuclear powered of course).
 
Grey Havoc said:
bobbymike said:
Love the Large Payload Submarine idea. The future fight is in the Pacific you should be able to walk from Guam to Hawaii to the US West Coast keeping your feet dry on the hulls of submarines (if they weren’t submerged obviously)
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Nay sir, Heavy cruisers, Battlecruisers, and Battleships for the win! (all nuclear powered of course).
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Let’s compromise and get both :D
 
We should return to a Cold War sized attack boat fleet size. SSNs are our biggest current tech overmatches vis a vis China/Russia IMO.
 
A metallurgist in Washington state pleaded guilty to fraud Monday after she spent decades faking the results of strength tests on steel that was being used to make U.S. Navy submarines.

Elaine Marie Thomas, 67, of Auburn, Washington, was the director of metallurgy at a foundry in Tacoma that supplied steel castings used by Navy contractors Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding to make submarine hulls.

From 1985 through 2017, Thomas falsified the results of strength and toughness tests for at least 240 productions of steel — about half the steel the foundry produced for the Navy, according to her plea agreement, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Tacoma. The tests were intended to show that the steel would not fail in a collision or in certain “wartime scenarios," the Justice Department said.

There was no allegation that any submarine hulls failed, but authorities said the Navy had incurred increased costs and maintenance to ensure they remain seaworthy. The government did not disclose which subs were affected.

Thomas faces up to 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine when she is sentenced in February. However, the Justice Department said it would recommend a prison term at the low end of whatever the court determines is the standard sentencing range in her case.

When confronted with the doctored results, Thomas told investigators, “Yeah, that looks bad,” the Justice Department said. She suggested that in some cases she changed the tests to passing grades because she thought it was “stupid” that the Navy required the tests to be conducted at negative-100 degrees Fahrenheit (negative-73.3 degrees Celsius).

 
jeffb said:
Grey Havoc said:
COTS strikes again.
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Cutting corners...
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An in-joke in the production of Battlestar Galactica, I've read. Budgets were restricted and corners were cut, so the designers expressed their frustration by literally cutting the corners of props. Accounts differ - it could be that the Colonials thought that right angles were bad feng shui.

scifi.stackexchange.com

Why does the paper in Battlestar Galactica have the corners cut off?

In Battlestar Galactica (the reimagined series), as far as I can see all the paper have their 4 corners removed. While I don't remember an in-universe mention of it (there wasn't really a need), d...
scifi.stackexchange.com scifi.stackexchange.com

Anyway, the Thomas case illustrates the fact that good intelligence should seek to find out the opponent's actual capabilities, not the specifications of their equipment.

Sure, the minus whatever requirement seems 'stupid' but it's still necessary because it's not as if the steel behaves normally until a specific threshold is passed. Degradation is progressive. The tinfoil hatters who like saying that burning jet fuel can't melt steel beams ignore the fact that it still loses half its rigidity and expands by 10% at that temperature (sorry, don't have references at hand). Likewise, one argument that the Titanic was so affected by its collision was that the substandard steel of its hull was more brittle in the cold water.
 

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Or that the coal bunker fire so weakened the bulkhead behind that it gave way under pressure, etc.

The last documentary I saw found large sections of the keel quite a distance from the main wreck site. Suggestion was that the keel was ripped out by the 'berg and not when the ship broke up. No way to know for sure that I see.
 
Foo Fighter said:
Or that the coal bunker fire so weakened the bulkhead behind that it gave way under pressure, etc.
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Or, you know, it hit a freaking iceberg and the hull opened along a third of its length.

In professional circles, the idea that brittle rivets, coal bunker fires, or any such thing had any significant effect on the sinking is given very little credence. The TITANIC went down because water got in. It went down quickly because the water got in quickly. The rate of sinking is adequately explained by the size of the holes.

All of which was correctly identified by the ship's designer within months of the sinking. The only significant difference between what's been observed at the wreck site and Wilding's assessment is that the seams opened rather than the shell plating being punctured. If the rivets hadn't given way, then the shell plating would have done.

Bottom line, hitting icebergs does not do ships any good. The MV EXPLORER sank in 2007 after being holed. It struck ice, opened a 3.6 metre hole, and sank. The MS HANS HEDTOFT sank in 1958 with all hands after striking an iceberg. Not so long before the TITANIC, in 1901, the SS ISLANDER hit ice and sank. No substandard rivets or coal bunker fires were necessary to explain any of these. Two of the three sank very quickly. There's no reason why TITANIC should be expected to have survived, nor to have foundered slowly.

For that matter, the designer of the QUEEN MARY 2 stated at a lecture I attended, marking the centenary of the TITANIC sinking, that no modern ship could be expected to survive the accident. The risk mitigation is not to hit icebergs, because doing so will sink your ship. But, that doesn't sell books. Conspiracy theories do.
 
I was getting at the differing theories that crop up time to time. They are posited, not because they are valid but to sell air time and programming. That they give credence to those who profit from them does nothing for the voracity of their claims. IMHO, of course.
 
Not to derail the thread too far, but RLBH makes some good points.
Even if we accept some of Titanic's steel was subpar, it didn't seem to affect Olympic and a sample of one ship tells us nothing. There may well have been hundreds of merchant ships with brittle steel at low temperatures, the same problem may have affected warships too (in terms of non-armour plating, though we know there was an armour plate cartel and how to we trust they were always honest about the quality?). Alas any sampling of that generation of ships is impossible now.
 
If the true stories came out they would probably not be believed by many. Fascinating when we get to hear of their feats tho'.
 
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Excerpt from Friedman's US Subs Since 1945. I like this idea a lot, me and a friend came up with something nearly identical. Would anyone else happen to know anything else about this "SSXN"? Google isn't yielding very much.
 
I like the SSTN idea. Probably carry three IRBMs per SLBM tube. Although I prefer a dedicated Columbia conventional strike platform.
 
bobbymike said:
I like the SSTN idea. Probably carry three IRBMs per SLBM tube. Although I prefer a dedicated Columbia conventional strike platform.
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Might be something like the below, an adaption of ATACMS to submarine cells. Remember this was also when we thought using unarmed Trident II warheads as bunker busters was a good idea.
 

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news.usni.org

Report on Virginia-class Attack Submarine Program - USNI News

The following is the July 27, 2022, Congressional Research Service report, Navy Virginia (SSN-774) Class Attack Submarine Procurement: Background and Issues for Congress. From the report The Navy has been procuring Virginia (SSN-774) class nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) since FY1998...
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